Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Up  to now, I’ve been fairly selective about what I share on  facebook.  It’s a bit of a snobbish thing on my part. I think of myself as an original content guy, so I post the link to this blog and an occasional observation in my status update, and maybe once a week or so, I’ve shared something, an  amazing dance performance or whatnot.

Also, I figure if a meme or article or whatever is interesting, whole bunches of people are going to share it, so why should I bother.  I’m going to relax those rules for a while, because of politics, and one thing Bernie’s got going for him is he’s definitely spawned a lot of cool Bernie Sanders songs.  Just now I shared “The Bernie Bongo,” a very catchy tune, and yesterday I shared “The Bernie Sanders Song,” a fast piano ditty with Jib-Jab style animation.  I noticed just now that they both use the “Enough is enough!” line, which, come down to it, is a damned effective slogan.  There are a ton of them, and it seems people keep churning them out.  I’ve seen them from as far away as Japan, and in every style from country to rap.

One of my favorites, still, is one of the first ones I saw, from like October or so.  It was a parody on the old song Mr. Sandman, but it was Mr. Sanders, Bring Us a Dream.

I love them all.  It makes me feel good to listen to them, knowing that we have such a wealth of creative people on our side.  Hillary has nothing that even comes close.

Normally, I avoid the campaign tactic of making silly puns out of the name of the candidate you don’t like.  It’s silly and it can cut both ways.  I don’t bother calling Hillary Shillary, and I haven’t even jumped on the Make Donald Drumpf again bandwagon, even though that’s a pretty good one.  (People wondered who was going to be the next Jon Stewart.  I think Stephen Colbert is growing into that role very  nicely.)

Gnorts, Mr. Alien

I’m not perfect, though.  I’ve begun referring to Tim Canova, who is challenging Debbie Whatsername Schultz (who I used to refer to as Debbie Unterwasserman Schultz, but I don’t think anybody got the joke) for her seat in congress, as Tim Canova Whoopass.
And I am struck by the case of the Florida gun bunny who was all over the internet talking about her right to keep her young child  safe with guns and how he, at age 4, already loved to shoot.  The other day, that 4 year old boy found a loaded gun on the back seat of her truck, and shot her in the back while she was driving.  Her name is Jamie Gilt.  I wonder if she feels gilty about leaving a loaded gun within reach of a child.  I wonder if a judge will find her gilty of child endangerment.

But there  was another one I saw on facebook today that totally blew my mind, because it’s a name that has been known to everybody in the world since 1969, and the joke has been staring us in the face that whole time, and I’d never even noticed that Neil Armstrong, if you  just use his last initial, i.e. Neil A., spelled backwards, is alien.  One of my facebook friends, commenting on this bizarre coincidence, took it a step further and pointed out the  Neil Arm spelled backwards, is Mr. Alien.
Let’s take this all the way.  Neil Armstrong spelled backwards is “Gnorts, Mr. Alien.”  Out of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy alone, which probably means trillions of planets and moons, billions of which could hold intelligent life, and in view of the fact that on our tiny little planet there are thousands of different languages, (so we’re back up to trillions again) it is almost inevitable that in one of our galaxy’s languages gnorts means “Greetings, we come in peace.”
And that, undoubtedly, is why Neil Armstrong was chosen.

We needed this.  Not only is it a win in a major state, keeping us competitive in the delegate count, but it is a major morale booster, maybe even a game changer.  The fact that Sanders won, when the polls had him at 20 points down, gives us hope for Ohio, where he’s only down by 9, and Florida, and Illinois.

It turns around the “He can’t win so why bother voting” argument that Hillary’s people have been pushing incessantly on facebook.  If everybody who supports Bernie gets out to vote for him, he will win, and Michigan encourages them to do just that.

The interesting question, though, if we’re talking inside baseball, is how did the pollsters get it so wrong.  One possibility, of course, is that they were flat out lying.  I think that’s kind of a stretch, actually, because they’ve been right about a lot of other races so far, and they are not ALL owned by the same people who own the main stream media – I don’t think.

The article I read about it on Think Progress put forth several ideas – last minute get out the vote effort, high turnout on college campuses, advancement with African Americans. Those might all be factors, and they had the numbers to back them up, but I’ve got another theory.

It  is, like a lot of my theories, basically just a guess and, in this case, not even a well informed one.  Living in Europe, I didn’t actually watch the debate that took place just a day or two before the vote.  However, I heard plenty about it.  Mostly from Hillary supporters on my Facebook page who were ‘deeply offended’ that Bernie would tell Hillary to stop interrupting him.  So typically male.

I did see a clip of the exchange and it seemed to me (but I am a total Sanders supporter, so there could be a bit of confirmation bias on my part) that she WAS interrupting him, and prattling on during his allotted time, and talking over him, and generally acting like a Republican.

It could be a lot of people saw it the same way I did.

Isabel has a friend sleeping  over, which  is fine.  I find one of the  great joys of parenthood is those  moments you’re not involved at all.  Just watching the kids playing with  other kids and laughing like crazy at really stupid stuff, like the motion activated minion voice on a card that starts talking, in minionese, whenever somebody comes into the room, or  when  they are dancing frenetically to a Wii program, is great.  I don’t  even have to think of something clever to say.

Sam was very gracious about giving up his bed and sleeping  on the  couch, there’s a bit of an advantage in that for him as he  gets to stay  up a bit later and watch TV.

The only problem  this  evening has been  Fifi.  She’d already been  out of her cage once today, for a couple  of  hours, and I  hadn’t planned to let her out again, but she overturned her litter box (which is an impressive effort for such a small creature using only her mouth) and I felt obligated (or, rather, Helena felt I was obligated) to clean it up.

So, we let her out, I cleaned it up, filled her food bowl and  figured that  would  be enough to entice her straight back in.  It was not.  I’m guessing that she is used to a one  or two hour  exercise period and  wasn’t about  to give it up just  because it came at an odd time of night.

Ah, well,  let’s  just give her a bit of time, we thought.  A  half hour later, I started chasing her around the living room, trying to cut off her angle of  escape  with  a broom, but  she wasn’t  having  it.

She’s back in now.  I’m not sure if it was the bribe of an apple, the dimming of the lights, or she just got tired of the game and decided to go back in.

And now  I’m turning in.  Fingers crossed for a miracle in Michigan.

I don’t really care if athletes do drugs, any more than I care if actors have had plastic surgery.  Sure, it’s cheating, but it doesn’t affect my life any.  I  still think Lance Armstrong is the greatest bicyclist ever, however he got that way.

Maria Sharapova

So, I’m not upset, or disillusioned, or particularly surprised that Maria Sharapova failed a drug test.  And, actually, I expect she’ll more or less get away with it – a short suspension, maybe.  Her explanation is that it’s a drug (meldonium – never heard of it) she’s been taking for years, her doctor prescribed it to her in 2006 due to an irregular heart rate (yeah, right…not sure I believe that, but, again, don’t really care) and it wasn’t on the banned list until a couple of  months ago.

That part’s true.  It was just banned a couple of months ago.  She says she just didn’t notice.  I don’t know if I believe that , either.  Still don’t care.

True or false, short suspension or long, it’s all O.K.  Her career is winding down anyway.  She was #1 in the world for a few months when she was 17, and, at 28, almost certainly never will be again.

But, she’s got millions of dollars and one tremendous thing in her favor.  She may not be the greatest female tennis player in the world, but she is certainly the best looking.  I was reminded of that fact -in fact, couldn’t stop thinking about it – while I was watching her innocent little “I made a big mistake” speech.  She’ll still get lots of sponsorships and spokesperson deals.  She might even be able to go into movies, although I don’t know if she can act at all.

At any rate, she’ll be fine.  If this had happened when she was 17, I’d feel bad for her.  Now, not so much.  Basically, she got away with it.